Wage Worry

Repeal of law would help lure businesses

June 22, 2012

Please come to our state, we West Virginians urge out-of-state businesses. We'd love to work with you and we could use the jobs your companies bring.

Then, too often, we sock it to them. Is it any wonder we have trouble persuading executives from other states West Virginia is a great place to do business?

Last week we did it again. The state Supreme Court ruled a Florida firm, ThemeWorks, must pay its employees $222,000 because the company did not comply with West Virginia's prevailing wage law while working at the state museum in Charleston.

While ThemeWorks employees in 2009 were creating some of the displays at the museum, the company was informed it had to pay them prevailing wage, as determined by the state Department of Labor. Bureaucrats there said ThemeWorks should pay roughly $40 an hour in wages and benefits, based on what the agency set as prevailing wage for carpenters at the time.

ThemeWorks officials refused and were taken to court. Last week, Supreme Court justices ruled against them.

Don't blame the justices for this injustice. As state law is written, they had no choice but to rule as they did.

State legislators are a different story. They could rescind the prevailing wage law at any time. So cowed are they by organized labor leaders, however, that they have refused to do so.

The law requires that companies contracted for government-funded projects, most of the time involving construction work, must pay what the labor department sets as prevailing wage for certain jobs. It has been pointed out the agency often uses union pay scales, not wage levels truly prevailing in an area, to set the rates.

And, again, they make it clear that in some respects, West Virginia is not a good place to do business.

ThemeWorks officials believed their designers and artists should be paid what was required realistically for the company to find and keep good employees - not artificially high rates set by government bureaucrats for carpenters. But now, the company will have to pay up.

How do you suppose ThemeWorks executives will respond when other Florida business people, or those engaged in similar work in other states, ask them about their experience in West Virginia? Oh, the people are nice, they may say - but the government is more interested in placating special interests than economic development.

That image needs to change. Rescinding the prevailing wage law would be an excellent place to start.